


California Dreamin'

by eech



Series: Romance in Hawkins [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Absolutely 0 Attempt At Research Was Made, Character Study, Established Relationship, Except Some Mild Car Troubles, F/F, Gen, Introspection, Navel-Gazing, Overly Verbose, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Several Long Drawn Out Conversations, They Are Having A Great Time And Nothing Bad Happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 09:56:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20307595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eech/pseuds/eech
Summary: She thinks that she left part of her heart there on the Florida coast, and now she’s just going back to the ocean to find that part of her heart again. Drifting in like a message in a bottle at high tide, she’ll pick it up and put the sun-bleached salt-stiff puzzle piece back into her heart. She’ll feel whole and free again, but then she’ll lose it when she’s swimming on the last day, knocked loose by a piece of driftwood or a strong wave. And the only way to collect it is to come back to the ocean, so she'll just have to keep coming back.





	1. Nancy Has a Habit of Thinking Far Too Much and Far Too Often

**Author's Note:**

> Usually, I try to post things only once they're finished, considering I'm a terrible worker and the moment I lose interest in a thing I absolutely do not finish it, promises made or not. But I'm really just very excited about getting some feedback on this, since I'm kind of in a rut with this fic right now. It's just not really what I want to be writing right this second- I love writing it, it's a lot of fun, but there's another fic, an equally as wordy fic that's already had plot in full swing for several thousand words, that I'm having more fun with. So I'm hoping posting a couple of chapters will give me the motivation to keep writing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road trip Begins.

Something has always drawn Nancy to the ocean. She’s only been once, down in Florida, but she could never forget it. The smell of salt and spray, the soothing constant of breaking waves. When she writes her last will and testament she’ll demand that her ashes be thrown into the crashing waves of the California coast. 

Nancy’s never been to California, but whenever she gets the chance she demands that Max tell her everything they can about the place. Max will sometimes pull out her box full of photos, because she knows Nancy loves looking at them. Photos of her and her friends, of her family before her parents divorced, of her new family before they moved to Hawkins. Perched on rocks, licking ice cream on a boardwalk, swimming, surfing. 

Max lets her keep some of the duplicates. There’s one photo in particular that’s her favorite- Max, somewhere around eight or nine, sitting in the driver’s seat of a cherry red convertible, pretending to drive the car. In the background there are a row of palm trees standing stark and tall, and everything seems to be awash with blue-green except the convertible and Max’s bright hair. Nancy figures that Billy’s dad took the photo, since there’s a much younger, much blurrier Billy trying to escape the shot, and Max’s mom is standing beside Max. 

Nancy doesn’t know why she likes the photo so much. It’s just such a nice picture, and every time she looks at it she’s overcome with a weird sense of longing. Maybe she wishes she could be in that picture forever, tinted blue-green and grainy. 

She keeps the photo in the little side-pocket of her purse, which Max thinks is really weird. It’s kind of become a little comfort object for her, so whenever she feels the Upside-Down creeping up on her she’ll pull it out and run her thumb over the little divot on the left edge. Before she knows it she can breathe again. 

This’ll be the first time that Nancy will ever be in California. She, Robin, Steve, and (after significant begging) approximately half of the Party will be piling into a Volkswagen microbus- courtesy Dustin’s aunt- and heading West.

“Do we have everything?” Nancy asks.

“Yep. We’ve triple-checked, Nance,” Steve replies, doing a quick headcount.

“Let’s get this show on the road, twerps,” Robin says, shoving the kids into the van, “I call shotgun.”

“Sorry, baby, Steve already called it while we were loading the van. You didn’t hear because you had your headphones on,” she pecks a pouting Robin on the nose, “you can try and call it at our first rest stop, if you want.” 

“Ugh. Unfair,” but she gets in the back anyways, next to Max. 

Not thirty minutes in and Steve is already getting antsy. 

“Are we almost there?” he asks, switching between radio stations. 

“We’re still in Indiana, Steve.” 

“I think you’ve severely underestimated the amount of time it takes to get to California,” Robin laughs. 

“No, I know how long it takes to get to California. I’m just bored,” he whines.

Through the corner of her eye, Nancy can see Steve glancing back ruefully while the kids play games with each other. The constant radio station switching is getting on her nerves, too. She slaps his hand away from the dial.

“Pick a cassette. Our first rest stop is in another half hour, you can move to the back then and play… whatever they’re playing.”

Thirty minutes later, Nancy pulls over to the gas station, letting the kids each pick out a magazine, a drink, and a snack. 

“No- I absolutely will not be buying you guys cigarettes, I don’t  _ care  _ if you want to try them. They’re bad for you. This pack is for  _ me, _ ” Steve flicks Mike on the forehead while Nancy buys all the food the kids picked out.

“If they’re so bad for you, how come you and Nancy and every adult ever smoke?” Max wheedles. 

“Because everyone used to do it, so we did it too. But that doesn’t mean  _ you  _ should.”

“Can I try just one?”

“It’s always just  _ one _ , Max. I first started smoking when I was eleven, you know. I stole some of my mom’s cigarettes and I told myself ‘just one’ and then ‘just one’ became sneaking over to the general store and convincing Marty to sell me a pack every Friday.”

“Please?”

“No. That’s final. Give it a rest, Max,” Steve flicks her on the forehead.

Later, when Steve is passed out cold after several crushing defeats in the baffling card game, Nancy notices pale fingers rooting through his pants pocket through the rearview mirror. And when, later that night, she catches Max on the roof of the van, smoking the pilfered cigarette, she doesn’t say anything. She remembers what it’s like to be sixteen and want to break the rules that she’s been bound to for so long. But maybe Max has always had more fire than her, more spunk.

Growing up, she’d always looked at the rebellious,  _ cool  _ girls with a bit of jealousy. Girls like Robin, and Max. She wanted to be them, to live their life, but her mother said that she should  _ be a lady _ and her father said that he wanted  _ good grades and no attitude _ from her. She became class valedictorian, and she was always polite and kind and, for the first sixteen years of her life, a total priss. Dating Steve Harrington had been her small little  _ fuck you  _ towards the stupid nuclear family that her parents wanted to have, her own little bad boy. But then he turned out to be  _ way _ too nice once he ditched Tommy and Carol, and suddenly he was exactly what her parents wanted from her. 

Once she started getting feelings for Jonathan was when she realized that dating Steve, even out of spite, would always have her bound to her parents’ will. She wasn’t dating Steve because it made her  _ happy,  _ but because she wanted to date the bad boy to make her parents mad. She realized that the truest form of rebellion is to just do what you please. 

Sure, that wasn’t the only reason that she broke up with him, but it was definitely part of it. Definitely contributed. And she knows that she did wrong by Steve, that she shouldn’t have lied about her feelings for him. She still regrets how insensitive she was. But she was just so caught up in all of it- the pretending- that she didn’t even realize that Steve  _ wasn’t  _ pretending, just dealing with everything the best he knew how. 

Forgive and forget. 

But Nancy isn’t  _ like  _ that. She gets so hung up on the past. The could-have-beens and the would-have-beens and the should-have-beens. She could probably take a page from Steve’s book and learn how to move on. She’s learned a lot from Steve, admittedly. Stuff like  _ pretending to be somebody you’re not isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  _

A lot of people think Steve is stupid- and sure, he’s not all that booksmart, but that’s not really his fault. He can be a bit of a doof, but he’s a good friend, and he’s wickedly funny and kind and he’s all these good things that Nancy just is  _ not,  _ which is why they didn’t work out. Because Nancy is bitter, and rude, and uptight, and spends all her time playing charades, and she’s got an angry streak that comes out when people don’t do what she wants. Steve is honest, but not cuttingly so the way that Nancy is, and he’s happy and carefree and easy and he’s got a smile that could light up a room. 

Steve is just a lot better than she is. Than she  _ ever  _ will be. 

It’s not that she has poor self-esteem. She likes quite a lot about herself, actually- she’s tenacious, headstrong, spirited, organized, and intelligent. It’s just objective fact that once you get past Steve’s facade of  _ goofy dumbass _ , he’s a better person than Nancy. 

Steve is the impossible ideal, really. Except for the fact that he smokes. 

“Hey, Max,” Nancy says, quiet so as not to wake the slumbering teens in the van. 

She carefully clambers up so that she’s sitting next to Max, nudging the girl’s knee with her own.

“Hey,” Max replies, coughing a bit when she inhales too much smoke. 

Half of the cigarette is gone by now, Max mostly having let it burn down rather than actually smoking it. Nancy understands- there’s something elegant and entrancing about holding a cigarette loosely between your fingers, watching the smoke curl up into the sky, leaving little lipstick prints on the filter. 

“You excited to be back in California?” 

“Sure. I miss the place, I guess. It’s way cooler than the midwest. I  _ love _ the ocean. I mean, until my mom married Neil I lived pretty far from the ocean, but like, way closer than Indiana. From Sacramento you can get to the beach in an hour and a half, even if the water is too cold to really swim in. If you wear a wetsuit you can surf, but it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, so my mom never let me. Also, I was like eight. I learned how to surf once we moved to Santa Cruz. It’s still pretty cold there, to be fair.”

“I love the ocean, too. I’ve only ever been once, did you know?”

“Really?”

So Nancy tells her all about her trip to Florida. The taste of the ocean, how she immediately needed to taste more. The way the sound of the waves could lull her to sleep, how she’d just stand and let the waves lap at her ankles and feel herself pulled out to sea, like her heart is a riptide whisking her away. She loved the creatures, and the sand, and the sun and the sea. How she thinks that she left part of her heart there on the Florida coast, and now she’s just going back to find that part of her heart again. 

Drifting in like a message in a bottle at high tide, she’ll pick it up and put the sun-bleached salt-stiff puzzle piece back into her heart. She’ll feel whole and free again, but then she’ll lose it when she’s swimming on the last day, knocked loose by a piece of driftwood or a strong wave. And the only way to collect it is to come back to the ocean. 

Max tells her she could be a poet.

Nancy smiles, ruffling Max’s cropped hair, “thanks. I want to be a journalist.”

“That’s cool too, I dunno. But if you were a poet, I think you could be one of those poets that they don’t let us read in class- because all the class poems are super boring- but you could be one of those poets that people actually like to read,” Max gets visibly excited, “oh my  _ god,  _ Nancy, you should write a poem about me!” 

“I could write a thousand poems about you, kid. You’re awesome,” Nancy says.

Max beams, “so are you.”

The cigarette has long been discarded, and the two just talk, looking at the stars. Max is sharp as hell and quick as a whip, and she makes a great conversational partner. Nancy can see why Steve is friends with these kids- she wasn’t lying when she told Max that she’s awesome. 

“Hey Nancy, how did you know you like girls?” Max asks after a prolonged silence.

Nancy mulls over it for a second, “it was kind of a process. And it’s different for everyone. It’s a long story. Why, do you think you might like girls?”

Max shrugs, “I dunno. Maybe. Tell me your long story, though.”

“Well, Robin says that for her, even when she was in denial, she somewhere knew, deep down, that she likes girls. It wasn’t really like that for me. There was no deep subconscious voice telling me that the reason why I couldn’t stop staring at May’s boobs wasn’t jealousy, but attraction. I kind of assumed that all girls looked at other girls like that, but it was really only around the time I was twelve or thirteen that I started to realize that maybe my attraction to girls wasn’t  _ typical.  _

“But I kind of brushed it aside, because I thought to myself, I like  _ guys,  _ I can’t be a lesbian. You can’t like both. I just think girls are really pretty, that’s all. I realized that was bullshit when I was around your age, but I pretended I didn’t realize it, because I thought I was broken. 

“I really only came to terms with it, really only accepted it once I started liking Robin. I was trying to push my jealousy of Robin and Steve off on some bullshit like ‘new feelings for Steve’ but Steve called me out on my shit. Then I went on a date with Robin and we- uh,” Nancy blushes, not wanting to talk about it in front of a child.

“Had sex?” Max finishes for her.

“You’re ten.”   
  


“I’m sixteen. I know about sex.”

“Well you shouldn’t. Anyways, we, yeah, we. Did that, and obviously I realized that I had feelings for her before then, but it was all very fast. It was a lot of shit I’d been repressing for a really long time rushing at me and it all culminated in one night. If you  _ do _ figure out that you like girls, don’t… maybe don’t do it like me. Because after I left Robin’s place, I had to take, like, a week to just sit there and think about it. 

“It’s also kind of strange, realizing something about yourself that’s always been true and that you’ve kind of known for awhile, just didn’t want to really  _ accept,  _ and it really fucks you up. I wish I’d had someone like me or like Robin when I was first realizing that maybe looking at girls like that isn’t normal to tell me that hey- maybe it’s not normal, but it’s  _ okay.  _ I think I would’ve had a better time of it if I did.”

“How do you tell the difference between just, like, appreciating how someone looks, or being jealous, and actual feelings?”

“I think… well, for me, it came down to when,” Nancy clears her throat, because she  _ knows  _ Max is old enough to talk about this stuff, but it’s still kind of weird, “it really… it came down to when I started having… sexual feelings. And I started having sexual feelings about both girls and boys.”

“How do you know if you’re having sexual feelings for a girl? Actually, how do you know if you’re even having sexual feelings?”

Nancy buries her head in her hands. She’s not a  _ prude,  _ not really, she’s had plenty of sex in her life but- her parents are traditionalists. Conservatives. And although she’s strayed from their influences in more ways than one, sometimes things just stick with you. For her, it’s  _ really not wanting to openly talk about sex.  _

The only thing that’s actually getting her to tell Max all of these things is that, as far as she knows, Nancy is the only older female in Max’s life aside from Max’s mom, and Max doesn’t really seem like she wants to ask about these things to her mother. Nancy’s seen the political signs in Max’s front yard. So Nancy has to be Max’s good influence, her older sister, and teach her and guide her.

Every single one of her instincts scream against it, but Nancy sighs and tries to start putting words together in a way that’ll maybe keep the conversation from straying too R-rated.

“Well, you see… sometimes, down there, you’ll… you’ll have, uh, feelings. Like, it’ll feel, like, weird, kind of. And you- sometimes you’ll have, uh,  _ dreams,  _ about people, and sex, and you’ll wake up and feel weird. Um…”

Max laughs, “you know, Nancy, you’re really good at giving advice. It’s nice to talk to another girl who, like, knows what she’s doing. El’s cool, but she’s the only girl my age and she knows less than I do about the,” Max uses one hand to do some lame-ass jazz hands, “ways of the world, or whatever. But maybe… maybe I’ll ask Robin about that last one.”

“Oh, god, please do. I really don’t talk about that kind of stuff, ever.”   
  


Max grins, sliding down to the hood of the van, “I can tell. I guess we should go to bed, huh?”

Nancy glances at her watch, and startles just a little when the time reads 2:30 am.

“Yeah.”

Nancy curls herself up on Robin, settling over the other girl like a human blanket. It doesn’t take much time for her to drift to sleep. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bit of clarification on the timeline: the previous fic took place a year and some change after the Starcourt incident, I personally pin it down to mid-October 1986, although you can choose anywhere in the fall. Nancy and Jonathan broke up a couple of months after the Byers moved away, but I don’t know when exactly. It’s not particularly important. This fic takes place in the summer of 1987, so about two years after the events of Season 3. As for the canon-compliance of this fic, it’s all canon-compliant up until the end of Season 3.]
> 
> This fic absolutely has not turned out how it was supposed to. This was supposed to be a stupid, funny, lighthearted ensemble cast road trip comedy and it turned into this overly wordy beast of a thing. I'm pleased with the writing in it, but the point of this fic was to give myself a break from extensive prose and introspection and let myself just have stupid fun. 
> 
> That didn't work out.
> 
> Then I started ANOTHER fic, which was ALSO supposed to give me a break from extensive prose and introspection, and it worked out for awhile and then it stopped working out because I think my natural state is just. Absolute Navel Gazing Bastard. That one's also a ST fic, set in a different universe than this one, and I'm pretty excited about that one. I didn't plan on publishing that one, but I'm an attention whore so I just might. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Jesus Fucking Christ, Michael Wheeler, Are You Fucking Nuts? Also: Touching Sibling Moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and Nancy have some deep conversation. Familial affection ensues.

When she wakes the next morning it’s already bright out, and the van is already trundling down the one-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. Somebody has buckled her in, and Robin has moved from beneath her to the driver’s seat. Dustin is in the passenger seat, and as Nancy further comes to, she notices that  _ California Dreamin’ _ , of all songs, is blaring through the stereo system. Trust Dustin to be so on the nose with his music choices.

Guiltily, she realizes that she’s sprawled out across most of the bench seat, relegating Mike and Steve to about a foot of space. The boys are practically on top of each other. Unusually, Mike is silent about his predicament. Knowing Mike, he should be elbowing Steve and yelling at Nancy to wake the fuck up. 

He’s asleep, passed out cold on Steve’s shoulder, which is why he’s silent. She quietly moves her feet off the bench and onto the floor, and Steve sends her a thankful look when he gently detaches Mike from his person and slides over to the middle of the seat. 

“Late night?” 

“Yeah. What time ‘s it?” Nancy yawns, righting herself and rubbing at her eyes.

“One in the afternoon.”

“Shit,” she runs a hand through her disheveled hair.

“Well, I guess it’s good you volunteered to drive tonight, then.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You want to switch seats?” 

Steve has always liked to sit with his right side against the wall. Scratch that- he’s always been uncomfortable sitting anywhere but with his right side against the wall. Back when Nancy looked too deeply into everything, after the events of Starcourt Mall but before she and Jonathan broke up, she wondered why it could be. Did he have some sort of trauma that required him to protect the right side of his body? Did he think he could better protect himself with his left side? When she asked him, he just laughed at her. He told her that he liked to sit there because he always had. He always sat on the right side of his parent’s car, and on the right side of the dinner table, and eventually it became habit. He told her to stop looking too deeply into the silly things, and save her detective skills for the stuff that matters. 

She’s been working on it, but she’s always thought too much.

She and Steve awkwardly try and shuffle past each other. It requires Nancy to bend her knees and lean backwards, and Steve has to worm his way underneath her back, but they accomplish the task. Even if they face death every time the van hits a pothole. Once she’s settled, Mike, seemingly able to sense another person’s presence in his sleep, turns and clings to her. He’s always been a clingy sleeper, and he’s always red as a tomato when he wakes up to find himself in a compromised position. 

“He really likes to cuddle, huh?” Steve asks, trying to arrange his long limbs into a passably comfortable position.

“Yeah. He’s always been that way. Gosh- it was so cute when he and Will were younger. I have so many pictures of them. I have this one picture- it’s so adorable- it’s just Will sitting on our couch, reading, and then Mike is like,” she mimes Mike’s position, “all splayed on top of him, like just human blanket kinda thing, and… it’s great.”

“He and Will, huh?” Steve cocks an eyebrow at the sleeping boy.

“Mike’s never told me anything about it but… they  _ do _ call me Nancy Drew for a reason. They’ve been different around each other since that first Thanksgiving that the Byers were back.”

Dustin, overhearing their conversation, whips around in his seat.

“Are you talking about Mike and Will? Oh, they’re  _ totally  _ dating. Max and Lucas and I all agree on it. We’re gonna let them tell us when they’re ready, but  _ shit.  _ It’s been almost two years since they started acting all  _ stupid  _ every time they look into each other’s eyes. And you know how hard it is for me to keep a secret.”

Steve nods sagely, like he definitely does. Nancy, admittedly, doesn’t know Dustin too well, but even she knows that he can’t keep his mouth shut. Maybe he introduces himself to new people like that-  _ Hi, I’m Dustin Henderson, and I can’t shut up to save my life, or anyone else’s for that matter.  _

Nancy wiggles Mike’s gold hoop earring, the one that Will, all the way over in Illinois, has an exact match of.

“They’re totally dating,” Nancy grins.

Mike begins to stir at her fiddling, slapping her hand away from his ear.

“Stop it. Don’ like it when you do that,” Mike grumbles, and Nancy knows he isn’t really awake because he isn’t scrambling away and turning beet red.

He buries his head back into her lap, trying to get comfortable.

“Why, because only Will’s allowed to touch your earring?” Nancy teases, but he doesn’t respond. He’s out cold again.

Once they reach a gas station, he finally wakes up. She feels like a mother duck, with her line of ducklings trailing behind, begging her to please _please _let them get more than one snack and drink, they didn’t eat _breakfast _because Robin is mean and wouldn’t buy anything and the snacks in the van are all _gone _and _please. _Half of her, the half that listened to the parents when they warned her not to let them eat too much junk, wants to say no. The other half, the little Steve voice that’s constantly in her head, tells her _c’mon, it’s vacation. Let them enjoy it. _

Then the real Steve, seemingly noticing her hesitation, says much of the same thing. Giving in to both the real Steve and her devil-on-the-shoulder Steve, she acquiesces and lets them buy as many snacks and drinks as their hearts desire. Within the budget of fifty bucks, of course, because  _ do you want to be able to buy things when we get to San Diego or not?  _

Steve takes over the driving next, which means that she and Robin get to make out in the back of the van, while three of the kids hide from them on the bench seat closest to the front, because  _ ew, gross. _

It’s seven in the evening by the time they get to a restaurant to eat dinner. Nancy doesn’t skimp on the food or a soda, knowing that she’ll need extra energy if she’s going to drive for close to eight hours straight, and in the night no less. Mike is quiet, not saying much, just moving his earring back and forth the way he always does when he’s thinking. His mediocre diner fries lie mostly untouched, so Nancy nabs about half of them.

“What’s up, Mike?” she asks, chewing on one of his fries. 

Instead of answering, he shrugs. That seems to snap him out of his thoughts, though, as he turns his attention back to his food and then squawks indignantly when he notices half his fries have disappeared from his basket. 

Then they’re back on the road, Nancy driving and Mike sitting shotgun. He didn’t actually call it, Max did, but Mike managed to convince Max that he would be up way later than her (he slept until two thirty) and he wanted to be able to control the stereo once everyone’s asleep. 

Around eleven thirty, Max, the last one awake aside from the Wheelers in the front seat, manages to drift off. When she hears Max’s breaths get slower and heavier, a sure sign that she’s asleep, she glances at Mike out of the corner of her eye.

Despite only being sixteen, Mike looks so adult sometimes. Mostly he looks like he’s still twelve, but it’s times like these, when he’s staring out of the window, pensive, that he looks too grown up. Part of it is definitely the forfeit of the bowl cut- he finally stopped straightening his hair to achieve the _ perfect look _ , let his hair fall around his face in curls. When he first did it, Nancy told him it looked nice. It does, she thinks. It suits him.

Nancy knows Mike. She knows that he’s got something to say to her, there’s no way he’d sit in the passenger side seat otherwise. He doesn’t care that much about the radio.

Mike isn’t big into feelings, or acknowledging that he has them. At least, not to anyone that isn’t Will. So he always pretends to be casual. 

He finally starts talking when they pass Lincoln, Nebraska. 

“I think I’m going to propose to Will,” Mike says, and it’s so sudden that Nancy almost slams the breaks.

She’s glad she didn’t, because they’re going eighty miles an hour, and that’d be the death of them. Literally.

“Uh-” she falters.

The first time Mike explicitly acknowledges to her that he’s in a relationship with Will, it’s to tell her that he’s going to  _ propose? _

“Like,” he continues, not noticing the way her jaw touches the floor, “I know that we can’t actually get married, officially, but it’d be symbolic. Ceremonial. Or…” she looks at him briefly and notes the blush on his cheeks, “or whatever. It wouldn’t be legally binding, because, I mean, it can’t be, but… it’d be something close.”

“Mike… you’re… the first time you ever even talk to me about your relationship, and you’re talking about  _ proposal.  _ What the hell is up with that?”

“I heard you guys talking this morning. I just… I needed to talk to someone about this,” Nancy can’t see him, eyes focused on the road ahead, but she knows he’s picking at the hem of his shirt. 

“Mike, you’re sixteen,” Nancy says, softer this time, “that’s… that’s really early to get married.”

Mike shakes his head, “Nance, I- I know that, and everything, but… Will is  _ it  _ for me. I can just feel it. He’s it for me. If it isn’t him, it won’t be anyone, ever again. It’s not like it was with El. I knew El wasn’t my forever. Will… he’s,” he lowers his voice, getting embarrassed, “he’s the love of my life.”

“Sure,” Nancy says.

“Sure… what?” 

“I’ll help you. If this is really what you want to do, I’ll help you. I’ll- I don’t know, what do you need? I’ll listen to you, I’ll give you advice, hell, I’ll help you buy the fucking rings. Just to be completely clear: I still think this is a stupid idea because you’re sixteen, but I’ll support you. If this was a legally binding marriage I would  _ not  _ be saying the same thing, I want that to be  _ clear _ , but it’s not. And besides, I know Will will say yes. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

“Thanks, Nance,” Mike goes quiet for a second, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure Will’s gonna say yes. I… the earrings, uh- they were kind of his way of telling me that I’m his forever. Almost like being married?”

He goes quiet again. 

“Mom and Dad don’t know,” he’s playing with his earring again. 

“I figured. Are you going to tell them?”

“I don’t know. I keep trying to, and then I remember that they voted for Reagan, and then I can’t do it. I love Mom, a lot, but… I don’t know if she’ll love me after I tell her that Will and I are dating.”

Nancy hums, knowing exactly what he means, “it’s pretty romantic, what you said. About Will being it for you. That’s pretty cute.”

“I mean, well… he is,” Mike says, “do you think… Robin is it for you?”

Nancy thinks about it.

“I don’t know. She might be. I wouldn’t be complaining if she is. But I think… with you and Will, it’s different. I’ve never had that type of bond with someone. If I did, I guess I could probably see how they’d be it for me,” Nancy says plainly.

And it’s true. She  _ doesn’t  _ know if Robin is it for her. She kind of hopes that she is, but she doesn’t know with the same certainty that Mike seems to. The thing about Will and Mike is that, unlike everyone else she knows, she’s completely inclined to believe it when they say that they’re it for each other. They have the type of bond that Nancy can’t even wrap her mind around. They’re more than just best friends, both in a romantic sense and in  _ another  _ sense, in a deeper, more irreversible sense. She thinks that even if they broke up, they’d still be it for each other. They’re just that close. 

“You’re lucky to have the bond that you do with Will. That isn’t something that most people get in their lifetime.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I love you, Mike,” she says, because they don’t say it enough.

“I love you too.”

Silence stretches out for miles, and by one in the morning she thinks Mike is asleep.

She’s wrong, as it turns out, when he fiddles with his shirt sleeve and starts talking.

“Can I… could I talk to you about Will? It’s just that I’ve never been able to talk about him to anyone, and I really want to, so, can I?” he asks.

“Why wouldn’t you be able to? It might help me stay awake.”

She’s stricken by a sudden sense of fondness for her little brother when he starts to ramble about his boyfriend. They don’t have a lot of moments like these, typically sticking to the lighter stuff and the playful insults, but the moments have definitely increased as Mike gets older. 

  
Sometimes she almost forgets that she’s the older of the two. Most of the time, when he’s being immature or getting her to do things for him, she’s fully aware of their birth order. But when he’s being gentle and honest, or when he’s talking about the Upside-Down, he feels years older than her. 

Then there are times where he feels so immeasurably small and grown-up to her at the same time. Those times are rare- she can count the occurrences on one hand. The first time was the night that Will’s fake body was dragged out of the quarry- she caught him and their mom just hugging while he sobbed. All at once, he seemed like he’d seen everything there was to see, but like he was too young to handle it all. Probably because he was.

She hadn’t felt the same way when Barb had died- when she’d actually, really, truly been gone. It was heart-wrenching, it was terrible, and she grieved- she never stopped grieving, really, but she moved  _ on.  _ She proceeded with her life, and she made herself into something, and it grew to a point where she didn’t cry when she thought of Barb, just fondly remembered all the good memories between them.

For Mike, it was a whole different story. She could see it in his eyes, that night- to him, the world had just ended. One moment it was rotating around its axis and the next moment it was sitting stock still in time and space. Something nasty in her looked at her little brother’s grief and wished that somebody could feel for  _ her  _ like that. 

The same ugly part of her that wished that she could sit in her mother’s arms like that and cry. She used to, way back when, but it’d been years. Nancy didn’t have the best relationship with either parent- sure, they got along fine, they had a couple of moments, but that was it. Mike was  _ close  _ to their mother, still is. Nancy hasn’t been close to her family in a long time. It’s something that she misses- and while she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to be close to them in the way Mike is, she’s been trying to bridge the gap between herself and Mike. She’d  _ been _ trying to bridge the gap even before the stuff with the Upside-Down. Shared trauma just seemed to make it easier. She needs to stop having shared trauma with people, it’s getting real old. 

She misses him, even though she sees him everyday. She misses when they were younger and got along impeccably, before Nancy got a stick up her ass and Mike started spending all of his time trying to get a rise out of her. On nights like tonight, when there’s no reason for her to cry but she wants to anyways, she wishes she could just call him and fall into his arms, be a family again. They hadn’t been that in a while. Maybe they never were.

Listening to Mike talk, she feels like they’re a normal pair of siblings.

“Thanks for listening to me Nance, it’s nice. And… uh- if you want to talk, ever, y’know, I’ll be here. For you. To talk to.”

“Good to know you inherited none of mom’s social grace,” Nancy jokes.

“I was trying to be  _ nice,  _ why are you insulting me!?” 

“That’s sweet of you, though, Mike. I don’t know if I’ll take you up on that offer, I don’t talk to people much about things like this, but I think spending more time with you would be nice. Sometimes I miss being just… brother and sister. Sometimes it feels like we aren’t.”

“I get what you mean,” he looks down for a beat, “hey, could we pull over at the next rest stop? I really need to pee.”

They stop at the next rest stop- a gas station- at 2:46 am, an hour and fifteen minutes before Nancy has to wake up Steve so he can take the first (second?) driving shift. Nancy leans on the van, eating the Runts she bought to keep her awake for the rest of her drive. She doesn’t know how Mike is still awake, but she guesses it has something to do with him being sixteen and sleeping until two in the afternoon the day before. 

He comes out of the bathroom after awhile, and Nancy notices that that’s  _ Steve’s  _ cable-knit burgundy turtleneck sweater, and why does he have that? 

“Why are you wearing Steve’s sweater?”

“How do you know it’s his?” he narrows his eyes.

“I used to date him.” 

Mike grins widely, “you sure?” 

“Positive,” Nancy smiles back.

Mike’s smile gets a little smaller, mirroring their mother’s fond look, and he gives her a light punch on the shoulder. 

Somehow, that sends her teetering over the emotional ledge she’s been balanced atop of for the past several hours. 

Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, but she starts crying. Not sobbing, really, but just sort of weeping. 

“I didn’t punch you that hard- wait, Nance, no, don’t cry, it wasn’t- Nance-” 

“C’mere,” she says, and beckons Mike towards her.

Mike is taller than her by a lot, by now. So she’s crying into his chest, not his shoulder, and she’s got her arms around his waist and not just below his armpits. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Just tired, I think. Just need a good cry,” she manages, once the crying subsides. 

Wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands, she steps back. 

“Think I might be sleep deprived,” she says, “we should get going again.”

She expects Mike to fall asleep when they get in the van again, but he stays awake. She isn’t looking at him, but she can feel his eyes burning a hole through the side of her face.

She sighs, “out with it.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to say anything to you,” he huffs.

“Yeah, sure. Now out with it.”

He hesitates.

“I’m waiting.”

“Are you happy?” he finally asks.

“I just cried, Mike.”

“No, like, are you  _ happy _ ?”

“Am I  _ happy _ ? Like, what, right now? Or…”

“No, not right now, just- in general. Does it get… better, y’know?”

“I’m not happy in general, no, but I don’t think anyone is. People are so obsessed with finding  _ true happiness _ , and it’s  _ bullshit,  _ because happiness isn’t a state of being. It’s an emotion. So no, I’m not happy. But I’m content, and that’s all that matters. I’m content with school, with work, with my girlfriend. I think the best you can do, the best anyone can do, is to find contentment and then try and make every moment the happiest it can be from there. To let contentment be the baseline, and then feel your emotions to the fullest. It’s best to let yourself feel your emotions… I learned that the hard way.”

Mike remains silent, so Nancy takes a deep breath and continues.

“Listen, Mike, I think that too many people want to live their lives in the superlative. They want to be the richest, the happiest, the most beautiful, the most successful. But when you strive towards the impossible ideal, you’ll end up discontent. People underestimate the value of living your life in the middle.”

“So you just pull philosophy out of your ass all the time?”

Nancy laughs, “shut up. No, I’ve just… thought about this before.”

“You think a lot, huh.”

“Yeah. That’s one thing we don’t have in common.”

He punches her, and  _ Mike, we could have DIED,  _ even though she barely swerved.

“Okay, now go to bed, dipshit. You’re going to completely ruin your sleep schedule like this. I’m having Steve wake us both up at noon, no matter what.”

“Ugh,” Mike groans, but she can see him curl up in his seat.

  
It's silent in the car after that, with no radio stations even in range. She sighs internally, and sinks into the static. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate my sister, so I honestly can't relate to Nancy, but this is what I feel like it would maybe feel like if you missed being super close to your siblings. I have a terrible habit of feeling everything that my characters are feeling, so I was like wow I wish that I could be closer to my younger brother, Michael Wheeler, the entire time I was writing this. Also, nothing in this chapter was part of the Grand Road Trip Plan. Originally, she was only going to have a deep talk with Max, but then Mike ran away from me and this happened. I suppose Nancy is gonna become some sort of de-facto counselor to three sixteen year olds.

**Author's Note:**

> [Bit of clarification on the timeline: the previous fic took place a year and some change after the Starcourt incident, I personally pin it down to mid-October 1986, although you can choose anywhere in the fall. Nancy and Jonathan broke up a couple of months after the Byers moved away, but I don’t know when exactly. It’s not particularly important. This fic takes place in the summer of 1987, so about two years after the events of Season 3. As for the canon-compliance of this fic, it’s all canon-compliant up until the end of Season 3.]
> 
> This fic absolutely has not turned out how it was supposed to. This was supposed to be a stupid, funny, lighthearted ensemble cast road trip comedy and it turned into this overly wordy beast of a thing. I'm pleased with the writing in it, but the point of this fic was to give myself a break from extensive prose and introspection and let myself just have stupid fun. 
> 
> That didn't work out.
> 
> Then I started ANOTHER fic, which was ALSO supposed to give me a break from extensive prose and introspection, and it worked out for awhile and then it stopped working out because I think my natural state is just. Absolute Navel Gazing Bastard. That one's also a ST fic, set in a different universe than this one, and I'm pretty excited about that one. I didn't plan on publishing that one, but I'm an attention whore so I just might. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
